At 2-2 on Tuesday night, most Rangers fans were crying out for the introduction of Alfredo Morelos in the hope that he could produce a moment of magic, as he has so often done in the past, and give us a lead to take to the Netherlands, however, Giovanni van Bronckhorst decided to leave him on the bench, much to the surprise of the 50,000 inside Ibrox and everyone watching on TV.
The Colombian international has looked far from his sharpest best since returning to first-team action, it’s been a long 4-5 months and the most important thing is that he gets fit and stays fit, with Antonio Colak looking like he has settled in, the gaffer decided that there was no need to risk him and started him in a behind closed doors friendly with Huddersfield Town on Wednesday instead.
Speaking to Football Insider, Allan Hutton certainly raised an eyebrow or too at El Bufalo not making it on to the pitch but has backed him to reclaim his starting berth:
“I was definitely surprised.
“Colak played well of course, you heard Van Bronckhorst speak about him afterwards. It wasn’t just his work rate, it was about the goals that he scored and it was what he was doing off the ball.
“I think when Morelos has been out for so long, it’s weird. Colak’s come in and done really well, I still believe Morelos, when fully fit, is the number one striker.
“I think it was an opportunity to go and try and get that lead that I think they need going in to the second leg, Morelos gives you something a little bit different. He can be a bit of a bully at times up front and I think that’s what they were missing towards the end of the game.
“I was surprised, it made me think has something happened in the background for the reason to have him not play at all. He needs minutes within his legs, it’s not just training, he needs to play games. So I thought that would’ve been an ideal opportunity to bring him on but obviously the manager felt that he didn’t need to.“
It was a surprise that Morelos never came on for the last ten minutes or so, he has got minutes in his legs already and has been back in full training for some time, Gio must have been comfortable with the work that Colak was doing and was happy to just make changes bending the Croatian international.
There have been calls for Morelos to be named in the starting XI, however, a tap-in aside, we’ve not really seen him anywhere near being close to his best whereas Colak has now scored four goals in four games with his performances improving every time.
The manager has some big calls to make over the next week with who leads the line in Eindhoven being one of the biggest – unfortunately for him – if we lose – he will get pelters either way. Who’d be a manager eh?!